How do I get git to default to ssh and not https for new repositories

These days when I create a new repository on GitHub on the setup page I get:

git remote add origin https://github.com/nikhilbhardwaj/abc.git
git push -u origin master

And whenever I have to push a commit I need to enter my GitHub username and password.

I can manually change that to

[email protected]:nikhilbhardwaj/abc.git

in the .git/config. I find this quite irritating - is there some way I can configure git to use SSH by default?

Set up a repository's origin branch to be SSH

The GitHub repository setup page is just a suggested list of commands (and GitHub now suggests using the HTTPS protocol). Unless you have administrative access to GitHub's site, I don't know of any way to change their suggested commands.

If you'd rather use the SSH protocol, simply add a remote branch like so (i.e. use this command in place of GitHub's suggested command). To modify an existing branch, see the next section.

$ git remote add origin [email protected]:nikhilbhardwaj/abc.git

Modify a pre-existing repository

As you already know, to switch a pre-existing repository to use SSH instead of HTTPS, you can change the remote url within your .git/config file.

[remote "origin"]
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
    -url = https://github.com/nikhilbhardwaj/abc.git
    +url = [email protected]:nikhilbhardwaj/abc.git

A shortcut is to use the set-url command:

$ git remote set-url origin [email protected]:nikhilbhardwaj/abc.git

More information about the SSH-HTTPS switch

• "Why is Git always asking for my password?" - GitHub help page.
• GitHub's switch to Smart HTTP - relevant StackOverflow question
• Credential Caching for Wrist-Friendly Git Usage - GitHub blog post about HTTPS, and how to avoid re-entering your password

• GitHub

  git config --global url.ssh://[email protected]/.insteadOf https://github.com/
  

• BitBucket

  git config --global url.ssh://[email protected]/.insteadOf https://bitbucket.org/
  

That tells git to always use SSH instead of HTTPS when connecting to GitHub/BitBucket, so you'll authenticate by certificate by default, instead of being prompted for a password.

The response provided by Trevor is correct.

But here is what you can directly add in your .gitconfig:

# Enforce SSH
[url "ssh://[email protected]/"]
  insteadOf = https://github.com/
[url "ssh://[email protected]/"]
  insteadOf = https://gitlab.com/
[url "ssh://[email protected]/"]
  insteadOf = https://bitbucket.org/

You need to clone in ssh not in https.

For that you need to set your ssh keys. I have prepared this little script that automates this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
email="$1"
hostname="$2"
hostalias="$hostname"
keypath="$HOME/.ssh/${hostname}_rsa"
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C $email -f $keypath
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
cat >> ~/.ssh/config <<EOF
Host $hostalias
        Hostname $hostname *.$hostname
        User git
    IdentitiesOnly yes
        IdentityFile $keypath
EOF
fi

and run it like

bash script.sh [email protected] github.com

Change your remote url

git remote set-url origin [email protected]:user/foo.git

Add content of ~/.ssh/github.com_rsa.pub to your ssh keys on github.com

Check connection

ssh -T [email protected]